I don't like having the "cliche obvious" opinion, and I actually think "We Built This City" is an interesting little record, but nearly every other "Starship" song is close to worthless to my ears.
John Michael “Mickey” Thomas is criminally underrated and IMHO, one of the great rock vocalists of the past 50 years.
I agree Thomas is a very good singer----worth listening to when doing good songs with good arrangements and performances, like when he was in Jefferson Starship. "Starship," naaah.
I like both but chose Jefferson Starship due to more consistent albums and the fact that I absolutely love "No Way Out"....what a vocal by Mickey !
Saw him live 5 years ago and I couldn't believe he was still hitting those notes...and with full on power!
I do find We Built This City enjoyable in a campy, ridiculous way, though of course it can't stack up to what came before.
They probably didn't beg Paul to play those songs, but it's possible they briefly suggested it to him (since audiences would get mad at them for not playing We Built This City or Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, not knowing the difference between Jefferson Starship and Starship). Paul's "no" response would've likely been curt.
Side point on this: saw the last iteration JS with both Paul and Freiberg in band and it was very much a "Jefferson Family Revue" tho again ONLY of bands Paul was actually in. But not a single Paul Kantner "Jefferson Starship" song, meaning the band that launched with DRAGON FLY, which I found a little weird and disappointing, tho as always grateful to have had that last evening with Paul----iirc he died within a year of me seeing that show.
BOTH! I prefer 1979-1989 Jefferson Starship to the Airplane and early Jefferson Starship. Edit: I suppose I'll go in the route of carlwm and rank the post Earth albums. 5/5: Freedom at Point Zero (1979) Knee Deep in the Hoopla (1985) Windows of Heaven (1998) 4/5: Winds of Change (1982) Modern Times (1981) Love Among the Cannibals (1989) 3/5: No Protection (1987) Loveless Fascination (2013) Tree of Liberty (2008) 2/5: Nuclear Furniture (1984) Mother of the Sun (2020) (sorry Freiberg)
Starship isn't bad, it's just very commercial, but the 1979-1984 era of Jefferson Starship beats anything else Slick, Thomas, or Kantner were part of. It is great pop-rock.
Listen to Elvin Bishop Struttin’ My Stuff. It’s one of my desert island albums. Mickey’s vocals/backing vocals are incredible.
There's a clear divide between these two groupings: with Paul Kantner and without Paul Kantner. I loved PK's Jefferson Starship songs. They were *so* uncommercial, but at the same time, super interesting and catchy! Without those songs coming around among the more shiny, polished pop songs, it was never the same.
I can't remember if they were considered JS or just Starship by fall 1982, but I remember the song "Be My Lady" received some airplay on my town's radio station. It seemed to fit right in with the songs released by America, Chicago, Fleetwood Mac, and Crosby, Stills & Nash that fall
Shortly before Kantner's death, Jefferson Airplane's website proclaimed in large letters, "We do not play 'We Built This City'." It was like a preemptive strike, knowing they would get requests for the song from fans who didn't quite know the band's history.
The truth is those albums between 1979 and 1984 is misunderstood and overshadowed by what came after. Not the best this band had to offer but not bad either.
I don't often like to go with critics, but "We Built This City" is considered by many one of, if not the, worst song of all time (Blender, Rolling Stone, and GQ), and I'm inclined to agree. That album makes their Modern Times album sound like Led Zeppelin IV by comparison. I would find the song far more forgivable if it had been written by the band but the fact that their terribly awful hit single was written by outside songwriters screams "shamelessly desperate for a hit". Well, they got one, and we all got ear cancer. Well, ok only my Uncle Jim got ear cancer. And he lived another five years. He still hated the song, though. But why did Marconi play the mamba? Not sure why the inventor of the radio was toying with a venomous snake, but he likely got what was coming to him. As did we, in 1985. Memba, memba?
